This book will shake things up.
Among magicians, the events leading up to Harry Houdini’s death are a familiar family story, often retold. A lecture in Montreal. A student invited to make a sketch in the dressing room at the Princess. Another student present, curious about Houdini’s fabled physical strength. A request is made to test it, permission is given, and repeated blows are delivered before the 52-year-old man can brace himself. The show goes on despite the star’s increasing pain and spiking fever, and a doctor at the next stop in Detroit tells Houdini he must go to the hospital now. But it’s a full house at the Garrick, and the master showman goes on. A weary performance, a collapse, and emergency surgery for appendicitis. Houdini lingers for a week and dies—fittingly—on Halloween day, 1926.
But what if parts of the story are an illusion? Enter Larrian Gillespie, a surgeon and forensic medical researcher. With little prior study of Handcuff Harry, she’s asked to help a colleague create a Houdini website. For perhaps the first time, someone with deep medical knowledge examines the death certificate, and the problems she sees in that document lead her on a relentless search for the truth. Working with archivists, fraud investigators, medical historians, and Houdini experts, Dr. Gillespie exposes a brazen cover up. A scapegoat found, affidavits revised, documents tampered with, and a legend created—all to prevent a malpractice lawsuit and to obtain a massive insurance payout.